Final Activity Report Summary - SCALERECPRO (Scale-dependent recruitment processes in soft-sediments and its environmental controls) While significant efforts have been directed towards disturbance and recovery processes in soft-sediment systems, very few have conducted empirical tests of scale-dependency in recovery. However, this is imperative in order to bridge the gap between the scale of environmental problems (usually large) and the scale over which marine ecologists usually conduct their studies (usually small). The overall objective of this project was to investigate the mechanisms and patterns of early benthic recruitment and their relation to environmental forcing factors, and further, to link the mechanisms elucidated in relatively large-scale field experiments to recovery dynamics of soft-sediment communities at large, basin-wide scales, such as the entire Baltic Sea. While the importance of scale has received increasing recognition among benthic ecologists, prevailing theory has not fully acknowledged its significance. The study built on, and further developed, approaches and methodology that had been established during my initial Marie Curie Individual Fellowship in 2003-2005. A large-scale disturbance-recovery field experiment was conducted on the Swedish west coast, where different sized experimental plots were de-faunated and the subsequent recovery of the benthic community followed over time. Similar experiments were then initiated in the Baltic Sea. The patterns elucidated were linked to a comprehensive analysis of long-term benthic monitoring data from the entire open Baltic Sea. In this analysis, the focus was on the relationship between diversity and recovery potential in benthic communities and the role of different intensities and frequencies of hypoxic disturbance for the recovery of the communities. The results highlight the importance of biodiversity to the resilience and stability of benthic communities. Thus, this project adds to our knowledge on scale-dependence of disturbance and recovery in soft-sediment communities and elucidates mechanisms important in assessing the resilience of these systems.
